Kantar’s new Sustainable Transformation Practice identifies strategies for a sustainable recovery

16 October 2020

Can ‘Good Intentions’ Drive a Sustainable Economic Recovery? Kantar today launches a new Sustainable Transformation Practice aimed at helping brands develop sustainability- and purpose-driven business strategies and helping them lead their consumers on a sustainable consumption journey. The new practice identifies the economic opportunity in generating a sustainable economic recovery in a post-pandemic world as well as the key ‘fuels’ and ‘frictions’.

  • The COVID-19 pandemic has pushed sustainability up consumers’ agenda. Globally – 51% believe it remains a priority, while 22% believe it is more critical than ever.
  • Closing the Value-Action-Gap will create ~$12 trillion in sustainable economic opportunities. 92% of consumers have a desire to lead a sustainable lifestyle – however only 16% are actively changing behaviours. 30-50% of consumers indicate intention to buy sustainable products, but sustainable products account for only 5% of total sales.
  • In the FMCG sector alone a ~$400 billion opportunity exists with sustainability engaged consumers.

In a new report, Realising the Value of Good Intentions, Kantar’s Sustainable Transformation Practice identifies a need for traditional competitors to recognise there is power and momentum in collaboration, evaluate how their business models can transition from take-make-waste to circularity and to take responsibility for greenhouse gas emissions across the product usage phase of the lifecycle.

Additionally, the report lays out a roadmap for brands to place sustainability at the heart of their business strategy, from understanding where they have a right to solve, through leading consumers on behaviour change to close the Value-Action-Gap, to measuring the impact of purpose and sustainability initiatives.

New offerings within Kantar’s Sustainable Transformation Practice and the Sustainable Transformation Framework include:

  • Issue Radar: An AI-powered social listening tool that can help predict sustainability trends and behaviours, and guides brands on where they have a right to solve authentically. Issue Radar navigates the sustainability ecosystem to understand the relationships between SDGs, categories, brands and influences. Over 2 years it has analysed over 15 million news and social items and 3.6 billion searches though 4,000 lenses and covered 210 product categories, 2,500 brands and 1,100 themes.
  • Purposeful Impact: A program to help brands identify credible and ownable purpose strategies, enact the purpose within their organisations so it has a true and demonstrable impact and utilise purpose to evolve their business as the market evolves
  • Sustainability-led Innovation: A toolkit that brings the consumer and sustainability lens to innovation, identifying opportunity sweet spots that move the brand in the right direction, designing meaningful and different propositions, and shaping powerful go-to-market plans capable of driving behaviour change.
  • Consumer Change: A toolkit to help brands lead their consumers on a journey to close the value-action-gap, identifying category-specific desired behaviours, assessing the fuels and frictions of change, and shaping meaningful interventions.
  • Brand Social Sustainability Index: Measure and track competitive performance against SDGs, providing a quarterly review of the key topics consumers are focused on and how involved your and your competitors’ brands are involved in the conversation.
  • Purpose Monitor: Quantify the impact of purpose strategy by measuring its contribution on people’s lives and correlating it to business growth and KPIs. Combine the inside-out perspective of colleagues with the outside-in perspective of consumers to understand how they relate to, and engage with, your purpose.

More about Kantar’s Sustainable Transformation Practice can be found here. Additional webinars and thought leadership content available include: